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- [00:00]
Ed Mylett
So, hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about 5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com ed this episode brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, hoping it all works out well. With the name your price tool from Progressive, you can get a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance and they'll help find you options within your budget. Try it today@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
- [01:46]
Tony Robbins
This is the Ed Mylett Show.
- [01:50]
Ed Mylett
Hey everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. What are your fears costing you? I think it's time to evaluate that like you and I right now. What are your fears costing you? You know, we have these weights that weigh us down in our lives, these burdens, these fears that we have. Have you ever stopped to think about what it's actually costing you to have these anchors and these Weights wearing you down? These fears? You know, people ask me all the time, Ed, is making your dreams come true. The work you put in, the sacrifices you made, the people that let you down, all the dark times in your life, all the times you went broke, both financially and emotionally, Is it worth it? It's a very interesting question because they always phrase it that way. Is it worth it? Yet in our lives, we spend most of our times evaluating and contemplating what it's going to cost us. So let me say something to you up front. The price you will pay to become the person you're worthy of. The price you will pay to become the real you. The price you will pay to make your dreams come true and your vision a reality and the people around you blissful and happy. That price, and there's a severe price, is infinitely smaller than the price you're going to pay if you don't. And that others around you will pay. You know, I don't think God gave you another day in your life because you needed it. I think he added another day to your life because somebody needed you. But here's the thing. They need the real you, the authentic you, the one who's playing all out in their life and pursuing their dreams. I can tell you the answer to that question is as good as you think it'll be to make your dreams come true. And dreams that you can't even imagine right now, visions of your life. But maybe even more importantly, as good as you think it would feel to meet the real you, the one you were born to be. And remember this, you were born to do something great with your life. But to finally get introduced or reacquainted or reintroduced to that person, maybe you years ago knew them very well, that version of you. But things have happened. These anchors, these fears, these toxic relationships, whatever they might be, these disappointments in our life, we've moved so far away from that person that we're capable of becoming that we don't even recognize them anymore. As good as you think it'll be to meet that person for the first time or once again, it's a million times better. Now, here's the hook. You have to start thinking like a rich person. And I don't mean just financially. I mean rich in spirit, rich in emotions, rich in relationships. And for many of you, including me, we want to be rich financially. People ask me all the time, ed, why do you put out all this free content? I mean, you put out the best content in the world. Everybody else charges for inferior content. You put out the best stuff. And I appreciate when people say that, and you don't really charge for it. This is free. I do that because I believe in the law of reciprocity. I also want to make the world better, and I believe I put out enough good stuff. If someday I asked you to come to an event or participate in something, you probably want to come, but I want to pour into you. Because I don't think God gave me another day because I needed it. I think he gave me another day because people need me and they need you. And you need to remember you were born to do something great with your life. My brother, my sister, you were. And I want to remind you of that today. But I think it's time to evaluate what are my fears, my patterns. A toxic person in a relationship that I'm in with right now that's weighing me down, what's it ultimately costing me? Because it's just your life. That's all we're talking about, is just you, just your life. And by the way, you're not getting out of it alive. You are not getting out of this alive. So all these things that are weighing you down are truly silly, because at the end, we all end up in the same situation where our body eventually ceases to exist and hopefully our soul goes to heaven. But in your case, you got to stop thinking like a poor person. And I. I'm talking to me as much as I am you. Let me tell you what I mean by poor. Poor in spirit, poor in emotion, and poor financially. See, when I was broke financially, when I would go into a store and I wanted something, I wouldn't get what I wanted. I would get what I could afford. Sound familiar? So I was a guy who had flipped price tags over, oh, it's this, it's this. And I would evaluate what it would cost me, not what it was worth. And so oftentimes in life, people ask me, ed, was it worth it? But in their life, they spend most of the time contemplating the cost. It's going to cost me this, it's going to cost me that. You know, maybe I want to become the person I go to. Cost me losing this person in my life. It'll cost me time, it'll cost me my hobby that I like spending so much time in. It'll cost me pain and emotion and whatever it'll cost me, I'd have to let go of my fears. I have to let go of my patterns. And these invisible things that weigh us down in our life, they kill us. And so There's a lot of walking dead in the world. There's this old saying that they say it about men, but it's people. Most people die 75 or 80 years old, but they really stopped living at 21 or 22 or 23 years old. We just don't put them into the ground until they're older. Too many people are walking around like this, and maybe you relate to it. Maybe you relate to a percentage of it. These fears, these relationships, these things we worry about, these invisible boogeymen, what are people going to be thinking about me? Do you want to get to the end of your life? And if someone asks you honestly, how did you live your life? Do you want to answer truthfully? Scared. I lived afraid. Afraid I wasn't good enough. Afraid I wasn't worth it. Afraid of what other people would think about me. Afraid to lose people around me that didn't even love me or care about me or want me to be my best. I lived my life afraid. Or at the end, you want to say, man, I maxed out my life. I got all the emotions, all the memories, all the achievements, all the richness in every area out of my life. I maxed out my life. Well, I could tell you this. If you hold on to these anchors much longer, it's going to keep costing you. And the longer you do it. See, even these things, sometimes what holds us back is our feeling bad about things we've done in the past that we're not proud of. And we use these memories as weapons against ourselves. We stab ourselves with it over and over. Or somebody's cheated on us or made a mistake. We use them as weapons against ourselves. And that's what you need to be asking yourself, whether it's worth it. Is it worth it to make your dreams come true? Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to grow? You bet it is. A million times better. Because when you make your original dreams come true, you don't understand the ripple effects of all these other things you can't even think about right now that happened. When you meet the real you, it's spectacular. You have to remember this. You can't love yourself. Everyone here, man and woman, macho man and every single buddy, listen to this, okay? You can't love yourself if you don't even know yourself. And you can't know yourself if you're not truly being yourself. And these anchors cause us not to be us. I'm personally haunted with the thought of getting to the end of my life and never meeting Me, never getting introduced to me. I want to meet that man. I'm interested in who he is. And I want to do the things every single day. Because once I got wealthy and I was rich and I went into a store, I didn't look at price tags anymore. I looked at whether it was worth it, and I got what I wanted. And our lives are a perfect metaphor of that. We're constantly evaluating the cost instead of whether or not it's worth it. Cost versus worth is a subtle difference. Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to let go of these memories? Is it worth it to drop your fears you will never meet you otherwise? Some of us are held back by crappy programming our parents installed in us when we were young. Remember this. Most things in life are caught, not taught. We catch a way of thinking. We catch a way of having emotions. And we have to ungo. We have to unleash ourselves and let go of those things in our life. So what's the thing for you? What's the thing? Is it a person you need to let go of? Is it a fear you need to let go of? Is it an operating pattern? Is it a memory as a weapon you're using against yourself? Is it just. You're just not sure? You got to remember who the hell you are. And if you've never met them, you need to get introduced and you need to get acquainted. Because I could tell you of all the jets and islands and cool stuff I've accumulated in my life, all the accumulations are wonderful. And I want you to accumulate the things you want that will provide memories for your family if they matter to you, the donations you can make, the people you can be there for, all. All the different things you can do when you get financially secure. All those things are incredible, but they don't bring us fulfillment. They can bring us temporary happiness. And there's nothing wrong with temporary happiness but fulfillment. All of that stuff doesn't add up to meeting you, finally meeting you at some point in your life. Don't you want to meet you or get reacquainted? Because you once knew her. There was a time in your life where you knew her or him. You'll never meet them otherwise. And so I have to tell you something. You have to start. You have to start to make a bold move in your life because you're worth it, your family's worth it, and the world needs you. You were born for a reason. You were born to do something great in small ways and in big ways. In Your life, and oftentimes in our lives would hold us back. Sometimes is the stories we tell ourselves. See, it's not the events of our lives, circumstances that define us. It's the meaning we take away from those events. And those meanings create an emotion. And that emotion drives our behavior. That emotion of fear, that emotion of anxiety, that emotion of sadness. Or it could be an emotion of bliss, of confidence, of increase of belief, of being guided, of being protected. But you have to ask yourself that question. See, it's not the event, it's the stories we tell ourselves. And listen to me. An emotion cannot exist long term without a story attached to it. You've had a lot of things happen in your life that were emotional, but the story didn't stick or you didn't take away the wrong meaning. And so that emotion doesn't stay. If you're feeling one of those emotions, it's attached to a story. It's a story you're telling yourself. The emotion can't stay without the story. And the story is just the meaning you took from the event. It's just a meaning you took from an event. So sometimes the story you're telling yourself is, I don't want to be alone. So I'm hanging on to this person that still weighs me down. Or where I'm at is good enough. Because I don't want to risk what I've got and that's a story. Or I've made this mistake before or someone hurt me and what it meant was xyz. And you have a feeling about it. These anchors are actually lies we tell ourselves that are anchored in a story that doesn't serve us, that causes an emotion that sticks. So if we change the story, either we take a different meaning from an event and say, could it have meant this? See, when I was a young man with my dad's drinking, I thought this means our family's less than and we're dysfunctional. And all these things I attach to the. To the meaning I attached to that story that was happening. And then at one point I realized, no, what was actually happening was God was using that to teach me how to learn to be present with people and read people and be empathetic with people and believe in people. And that God was using that story for me. When my baseball career ended, I was injured. It probably ended a career that would have ended anyway, quite frankly. But I was a pretty good player. And when I got injured, I remember thinking, man, this is my only dream of my entire life, right? God doesn't Answer prayers, right? This was my prayer to do this right. The meaning of this is I just was never good enough. The meaning from it was it just wasn't meant to be. I wasn't meant to be somebody. I wasn't meant to do something great with my life. And I attached all these meanings to what was a pretty traumatic event. But I could have attached the meaning of that time, that God's got something bigger in store for me, that there's something bigger and bolder for me. And that Ed Milet I thought I was was not going to be a baseball player. But the Ed Milett I thought it was could be this other person who contributes to millions of people's lives. So once I attached a meaning to it that what God really did was I probably would have played three or four or five more years and then been released and then been in my mid to late 20s, and maybe I wouldn't have taken advantage of a lot of the opportunities that came along. So that career ended right when it was supposed to, so that I could start to redirect my life in a direction. And from there, I got a job at an orphanage. And that orphanage changed my life. Because of that orphanage, I met these young boys that looked just like me. These boys were all wards of the court. They were taken from their families, or their families were incarcerated or dead and had molested them at some point in their life. And so baseball ended. I'm finding myself making $6 an hour at an orphanage. And I'm thinking, God, you took multimillion dollars playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people a year, 50,000 people a night from me, to be with eight children in a cottage making six bucks an hour. And that's exactly what he was doing. Because what I needed to be was I needed to be connected with people. I needed to love people. And what's even crazier about it is the way I connected with those boys is they had grown up with all this pain and suffering and dysfunction in their homes. And that's what I grew up with in a different way, with my father being an alcoholic. When I was young, my career had to end that exact day. It ended so that I would end up in that exact house with those exact boys, and they could have someone who understood them, who could see them and knew who they really were, because I was just like them. I recently said to Jesse Lee on my podcast, I said, all people that go through any pain in their life, especially when they're young, we have different eyes. We just have different eyes. Our eyes just say, please love me, please protect me, please be good to me, please be kind, please be gentle, please believe in me. We have these different eyes. And I remember when I walked in there, they had my eyes. Not the same color eyes. My boys were of every ethnicity, every background. We had those eyes. And when I meet someone who's gone through pain in their life, I see those eyes. But I found out something. We don't just have the same eyes, we actually have the same heart. We have the same heart and every single human being has that heart. It's whether or not they'll unleash it. Unleash the real them, release the real them, or will they continue in their life to suppress the real them and settle for this less than version of them? Because they've created a bunch of stories and a bunch of fears and a bunch of relationships in their life that they hide in these stories, they hide in these emotions and they never unleash the real them. I figured this out. All I've ever wanted to do is change how I feel. I didn't like how I felt. I wanted to change how I feel so I would accumulate and achieve and do things to change how I feel in my life. And as I've gotten older, I've realized if I can change how I feel, I can get all those things the easy way. And that's what I've started to do in my life, maybe from 40 to right now, 52 years old. So I want to challenge you today. Evaluate this thought, Evaluate what are your fears costing you? What are these anchors costing you? I want you to really pray about it, really think about if you're on a walk right now, you're driving in your car, just what's it costing me and what would my life look like potentially? And by the way, you don't even really know. Just so you know, it's going to be so much bigger, so much more beautiful, so many small things that are going to happen along the way of you meeting you. And by the way, what's great is you continue to meet new versions of you. See, when you start to live your life without all these fears, without all these people anchoring you down with all these patterns and stories. What's great about it is there's a new you that shows up every couple years and there's this new version of you, an improved version of you every year. One of the things I'm excited about is to meet the 55 year old me because I didn't die at 21 or 22 like most people getting around to bury me at 85 or 90. No, no, no, no. I'm reborn all the time. I can't wait to make the 55 year old me. I'm chasing that guy when I get there. I can't wait to meet the 60 year old me. The 25 year old me was nothing like the 30 year old me. I mean, a similar character, but different life, different contribution, different thoughts. Too many people are exactly the same person they were two or three years ago. And that's what it's really costing you, isn't it? And the reason you're not happy, or as happy as you could be, is you know this isn't you. You know this isn't you. You know there's more in you. Deep down in your heart and your soul and your spirit. The reason you're not happy isn't these other people. Isn't your boss, isn't your job, isn't your body, isn't your lack of money, isn't any of it. It's that you know this really isn't you. You know this really isn't you. And it's time you meet him. It's time you meet her. It's time at least you get reacquainted if you once knew them. I want to challenge you to do that today. I want to challenge you to step out and drop whatever that anchor is or multiple anchors, or these weapons you're using, these mistakes you've made, these choices that you regret, blah, blah, blah. Stop it. That's not who you are. Your destiny is now. It's in the future, it's moving forward. And there's something great waiting for you. And is the price worth it? Absolutely. Is the cost worth it? A thousand percent? Because eventually you start getting what you want, not just what you can afford in your life. And here's the truth. You can't afford to get to the end of this life without meeting you. Because only then will you love you. When you're being you. You can meet you. And when you meet you, you can truly love you. It's time for you to step up. Remember, once again, I'm going to tell you he didn't add another day for you because you needed it. He added another day because some other person and the world needs the real you. If you listen to this show, you listen to this show because you want to have a happier, more fulfilling, more successful life, more than likely. And I have as a guest here today for the third time on My show. I'm so honored. The living. Of all the living people on the planet, the person who's helped the most people do that, and I'm honored to call him a friend. So welcome back. We're going to do that together today. Mr. Tony Robbins. Welcome back to the show.
- [19:52]
Tony Robbins
Thanks, brother. Good to see you, Ed.
- [19:54]
Ed Mylett
One of the things that happens when you lose perspective or don't quite have it where you hear, oh, my gosh, there's winter, or my skills may be moved out of the marketplace here soon. And by the way, Covid was even an accelerator in all these things Tony's talking about, sort of it. It sped things up pretty quickly.
- [20:07]
Tony Robbins
Yes.
- [20:08]
Ed Mylett
Fear is a big deal for people. And you and I, you get asked this all the time. I do as well. So someone's listening to, like, okay, I'm inspired. I've got some perspective, but I'm afraid I've got real fear. What techniques or strategies would you say to somebody if they're being honest? Anybody hears this winter is going to be five years, seven years, eight years, That's a scary thing for anybody to hear. And so what would you say to someone with fear?
- [20:32]
Tony Robbins
Well, you don't have to manage. You got to stop thinking of yourself as managing your circumstances and remind yourself that you're a creator of your life experience. And so when it's winter, first of all, it doesn't mean every night's a bad day, every day's a bad day, every dark day. I live here in Florida. It's 78 degrees and it's winter. Right. It's really nice. So where you are, what you decide to do, it's all varying in terms of the levels of winter as we just talked about. If you're in Africa right now without food, it's a very different experience. But I think the other part for people really is you got to understand there's two choices. There's fear and there's faith. And as simplistic as that sounds, I ask people, what's the difference? And they get confused. And I said, it's really simple. They're both made up. No one knows for sure what the future looks like. When I say the seven or eight years, it's not all just tough economic times. The there's going to be a confrontation with China. Maybe there'll be a cyber war. Maybe some will turn off your electricity. But there's zero question we're on target for that. If anybody wants to get a better understanding, they can read some of Ray Dalio's work on the changing world order and understanding what's happened over a thousand years of history. But the point of the matter is it's not all dark. That's number one. But number two is what's the difference between fear and faith? They're both imagination, but fear is imagination undirected. It's like weeds, just grows automatically. Faith is you decide to be certain. You take action, you follow through. There's no guarantee of anything. There's no guarantee. I mean, people run around with a mask and they walk outside and get hit by a truck, right? You know, it's just like we think somehow that we have a way to bulletproof ourselves. What we do is increase our probability. And what you really want to do is. So you have no fear of the future, is you want to add to your skills and your ability, including your emotional fitness. I don't mean intellectual fitness. I don't mean, you know, when people talk emotional intelligence, it's a nice thing. But the reason I use fitness is you can be a smart person and not be smart, right? You can have great capacity and not use it. So emotional intelligence is a capacity, but fitness is a state of readiness. You and I are both fitness buffs, right? So it's like we train ourselves so when a challenge happens, we've got the strength and the power to deal with that challenge, whether it be psychological, physical, or anything else. So you got to learn to direct yourself and train yourself to have certainty. And that's a huge part, as you know, that I do with all my seminars. Because most people are living in uncertainty. What makes somebody a leader is they find certainty in a world that's uncertain.
- [22:52]
Ed Mylett
Yes.
- [22:53]
Tony Robbins
Even if they're not smart, some people follow somebody just because they're certain they know what's going on. When people are uncertain, they look for somebody who's certain. Well, if you can develop that, certainly not based on enthusiasm, but based on a clear plan of how you can take advantage of winter, where winter becomes your best season, then the fear will disappear. But you've got to train your nervous system on a daily basis. Because here's the problem. Today the media are not bad people. They're good people, but they're doing their job. And what are they rewarded for? Catching eyeballs. Because, like, you know, people say we're an information society. I always tell people that's such bullshit. The information society died a decade ago. There's too much information. We're drowning in information. We're starving for wisdom. And we all know when it comes to the media, they get paid by getting your attention. And so if there's a commercial comes on, your child may die of drinking water. Film at 11. You know, people tend to look in because of the negative bias, the survival bias of the human brain, or clickbait. What is clickbait? You click on it. You know, the article doesn't even match it. But once you click, they get paid. So today, the media is not designed to inform or educate you. It's designed to startle you. If I startle you, you respond, well, most people that follows them, it's in their pockets, around them all the time. Now, after Covid, where people thought they're going to die by breathing, and now we're finding out a lot of different truths that we didn't know back then. And then you throw on top of that an economy that looks incredibly difficult. Most people alive don't remember or never experienced inflation. I started my business when interest rates were 18%. It was 18%. Right now, people are marching on the White House. You know what I mean? They're like freaking out because it's seven. So we're in a place where people have so much unknowns. So what you want to endure is take chaos and understand what's really going on. You and I have talked about this before. You know, I've got five kids and five grandkids. I think about these jobs disappearing the next 15 years, and how do I prepare my kids and grandkids? You do it by understanding those three skills you and I have talked about. One, Anybody that's the best in the world at something has pattern recognition power. They see things other people see as chaos, and they go, no, no, this has happened before. This is how it works. And they're allowed to anticipate where it's going instead of reacting. It's like playing a video game against a child. The child always wins. It's not because they're younger or faster. It's because they go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Because they played this game so many times, you shoot and you're dead in 10 seconds. Your next turns, after 30 minutes of their play, right, they know where all the bad guys are. They can anticipate, not react. Well, losers react, leaders anticipate. So if I can recognize patterns, if I'm good at investment, I recognize investment patterns. If I'm good in business, I. I know business patterns, and I'm good in my own life. I start realizing there's patterns that get me angry and patterns that get me excited. And I learned to direct my own patterns the second step is learning to use those patterns. And the third step of mastery is when you start creating them. That's what a great musician, that's what a great business person does. They recognize patterns so they're not reacting. They use them, and then they start creating their own. And those three skills, very good. Well, if you get those three skills, it won't matter what jobs change. You'll be a dominant player because you'll see what other people don't see. It's the fear comes from the unknown. So that's why I'm a student of history. When you study history, you can say, what's happening right now happens about every 80 years like clockwork. And it's the pat. You can read a thousand years of Roman history and see about every century, the same cycle. And once you know that, it gives you an unshakable feeling. You go, okay, I know what this is, and I know how to take advantage of this, and I don't need to be fearful of this. But then you still have to manage your mind and you still have to make sure you cut off the media's influence, because some people are saturated in that. And, you know, whatever you feed in your brain is what you're going to experience.
- [26:36]
Ed Mylett
I want to ask you about that, too, by the way. Just want to remind everybody, because you could be at any point in the podcast, if you go to join Tony100.com you can get five free taste with Tony. I'm saying that out loud. Five free days with Tony Robbins, that would be, you know, 25 years ago. I wish you were doing that for me back in those days. It's just unbelievable that you're doing this, but.
- [26:53]
Tony Robbins
But you're home, you have to travel or do anything else. Thanks to Z and everything. It's pretty awesome.
- [26:58]
Ed Mylett
It's so awesome. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Hey, listen, one of the things I did okay as a dad was I did teach my kids about money. And it was one of the most difficult things to teach them because it's not taught in school at all. They learned all of these things in school that, quite frankly, they're not going to use in their real life. And things they really need, like learning about money and budgeting and the value of a dollar. Let's be honest, most of us learned about saving and budgeting way later than we should have. But here's the good news. You can give it to your kids with a head start with Green. Greenlight's a debit card and a money app. Made for families that lets kids learn how to save, invest and spend money wisely. Parents can send their kids money on the app and keep track of their saving and spending. It's convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. It's really good. Maybe that's why millions of parents are already using it with their kids and learning about how money works on Greenlight. So start your risk free Greenlight trial today@Greenlight.com ED that's Greenlight.com ED to get started. Greenlight.com EDU Listen, I've made some mistakes in my life. Heck, half the time. This podcast is saving you time on mistakes I've made before. Let me tell you one of them. I owned a house in Idaho for a long time. I had these rain gutters that were really pretty, but they weren't functional. Leaves accumulated in it and I lost part of my roof. Clogged rain gutters suck. They're easy to forget, they're annoying to clean and they can grow into a big problem. That's why I love leaffilter. Listen to me. This is a big deal. There's an easier way for you to ensure your gutters stay clean and avoid costly damage. Every installation comes with a lifetime no clogs guarantee. Leaffilter uses award winning patented technology to keep out everything but the water. Over a million homeowners have already trusted Leaf Filter. So protect your home and never clean out the gutters again with Leaf Filters, America's number one gutter protection system. Schedule your free inspection. Take advantage of the Spring Spectacular Sale with up to 30% off your entire purchase at leaffilter.com ED that's a free estimate. Free inspection and 30% off@leaffilter.com ED see representative warranty for details. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax. Here's the thing. You gotta handle your taxes and waiting around and worrying if you're gonna get money back or what you owe and then waiting and wondering some more. You don't have to do that anymore. Right now you can get a TurboTax expert who can do your taxes as soon as today. An expert who gives your taxes their individual undivided attention as they work on your return while you get real time updates on their progress so you can focus on your day. Isn't that what you want to be able to do? Have an expert get your taxes done? Figure out whether you're getting any money back and when you're going to get it back and doing it the sooner the better for everybody. An expert who will find you every possible deduction and file every form, every investment, everything with 100% accuracy. So you don't need to worry about it all so you can get the most money back guaranteed. No waiting, no wondering, no worries. Now this is taxes. Get an Expert now on TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax Live. Full service, real time updates only an iOS mobile app. See guarantee details@turbotax.com guarantees. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. The reason you're going to learn a bunch is I have a very uniquely qualified man to visit with you. Rich Devini was a Navy seal, but he was also, and I can't say what group he was a part of, but let's just call it a very elite group of seals without using the name. So, Rich, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
- [30:30]
Rich Devini
Thank you, Ed. It's an honor to be here. So thanks for having me.
- [30:32]
Ed Mylett
First things first, I talk a lot about peak performance. You make a distinction in the book between optimal performance and peak performance. So any of you listening to this that are leaders of groups or just want to perform at a high level consistently, I think this distinction is really powerful. So give us the difference.
- [30:49]
Rich Devini
Yeah, absolutely. And it really came to me as I left the military and people were asking me a lot about peak performance. And what I realized was I wasn't comfortable with the term in defining what Navy SEALs or spec operators do. And the reason is because peak, at least to me, peak is an apex. And it's an apex from which you can only come down. And it usually has to be planned for and prepared for and scheduled. So for example, the professional athlete or the the NFL player uses the entire week to prepare and plan to peak for three hours on Sunday. Right? And so it really didn't apply to what we were doing every day because when I thought about, for example, myself in some combat situations or even SEAL training when you're freezing in the surf zone, there was nothing peak about my performance. We were just kind of moving through. And so I really started thinking about it in terms of optimal performance. Optimal performance is really what's the very best I can do in the moment, whatever that best looks like, right? So sometimes that best looks like peak and it looks like flow states and everything's clicking, right. Other times that's like, hey, I Am head down and I'm just taking step by step and that's all I got right? And it's dirty and it's gritty and it's muddy and it sucks. And that's really, in my opinion, what's. It's not only spec ops. I try to take all the stuff I learned in spec ops and apply it to life, but that's really what life is. I mean, life, it's unrealistic and probably unhealthy to try to peak at all times during life. It's just not going to happen. Right. So optimal performance allows us to be comfortable with this modulation and be comfortable with the fact that sometimes if you're just head down, just taking step by step, just grinding it out, that's okay. You're actually performing the best you can. Right. And I would say the COVID 2020 for all of us. I would imagine that most of us in 2020 didn't say that we were at. We were performing at our peak for most of 2020. Right. We were just. We were doing the best we could. And that's. It's really just a more realistic, more practical way to think about performance.
- [32:47]
Ed Mylett
I think that's real world stuff. You know, as I reflect on it, I think about the, you know, the most successful people I know are the people that perform at a high level. Really the key is they do it more consistently than other people. They do it under pressure, which we're going to talk about in a little while as well. Whether you're an athlete or a dad, you know, it's under pressure. How do you perform? How do you respond to certain. So you were in charge of the selection process and you make a distinction in the book. And by the way, when you're listening to this everybody, these are attributes you wish to embody if you're going to be happier and a higher performer. It's also attributes you want to find in people you want to surround yourself with as friends, as associations, colleagues, business partners, et cetera. You make a distinction, though. That's awesome. Between skills and attributes. Because this is something I think most people discount themselves. Well, I don't have these incredible natural talents or skills, so I'm discounted from performing at a high level. He makes the case. Guys in the book. Seals are regular guys. And I have to say I've got to know a few. And I don't know that I disagree with that. Necessary. I think there are extraordinary things about a few of them. But I tend to agree with you as an outside Observer. So what's the difference between skills and attributes?
- [34:02]
Rich Devini
Yeah, it's a distinction that I had to make when I was running the assessment selection because we were. Our particular program, we were bringing in very experienced seals and we were putting them through our process, and we were still getting about a 50% attrition rate, which is natural and okay. But the problem was we weren't able to effectively articulate why, and we weren't able to say why to ourselves to be comfortable with that. We weren't able to tell our senior leadership why. But most importantly, we weren't able to tell the candidates why they weren't making it. And these are guys who are coming in. They really. They were kind of all stars and rock stars. And to be able to tell them something like, well, you couldn't shoot very well or you couldn't do this very well, it just didn't seem to fit right. So I had to really break it down. And in a very general, basic sense, skills are not innate. They're not inherent to our nature. Right? None of us are born with the ability to ride a bike or throw a ball or. Or shoot a gun in the military sense, we can be taught them. We can sometimes sit down in a class and learn them. They direct our behavior in known situations. So here's how and when to ride a bike, throw a ball, shoot a gun. And because they're visible and because they're set up that way and kind of steps that you can learn and teach, they're very easy to assess, measure, and test. And this is why most teams, especially business teams who are kind of putting together dream teams, make the mistake of focusing only on skills. The best salesperson, best graphic designer, best marketing, whatever it is. What the problem with skills is is that it doesn't. Skills don't tell us how we're going to operate when things go south and sideways and the environment turns completely uncertain. Right? Because you can't necessarily apply a known skill to an unknown environment. This is where attributes come in. Attributes are innate, Right. All of us are born with levels of adaptability, of situational awareness, of discipline, of resilience, Right. They don't direct behavior, they inform our behavior. So they tell us how we're going to show up to a situation. So my level of adaptability and resilience, for example, informed the way I showed up when I was learning how to ride a bike and I was falling off a dozen times. Okay. Because they're hidden, though, and because of their background, they're very difficult to assess, measure and test. And the most visible and visceral environments that you can see. These things are in environments of challenge, uncertainty and stress. Which is why the laboratory I had, which was SEAL training, and whether it's basic, whether it's BUDS or the SEAL training I was running, it's all about throwing guys into challenge, uncertainty and stress. It was just showing these qualities. And I always joke when I take it back to buds, which is basic underwater demolition SEAL training, the basic course for a guy to become a Navy seal. You spend hundreds of hours running with boats on your heads. You spend Hundreds of hours PTing with 300 pound telephone pole poles and freezing in the surf zone. And, you know, over a 20 year career, I've been on hundreds of combat missions and I've done thousands of training evolutions and never on any one of them did I carry a boat on my head or a telephone pole on my shoulder. Right. So what they were doing to us in BUDS wasn't training us to be a Navy seal. Right. It wasn't teaching us the skills to be a Navy seal. What it was doing was just teasing out these attributes. It was seeing if we could do the job right. And so this is where we have to start thinking about making distinctions when we're putting together teams. And even in our own performance, our performance, especially in challenge uncertainty, stress is driven by these attributes. And that's really important to know.
- [37:26]
Ed Mylett
Well, I think also when I hear that I think of so many things, I think of even with our own children, we're always evaluating their skill set. But if they're really going to be flourishing their life, why not help them identify what their giftedness or attributes are from what you call it? Then I'm thinking of all the people I've recruited in the different businesses I've had. And I think, you know, you get these people with these perfect skills, perfect background, you're like, they're going to just crush this. They're such a great speaker, they're going to be great in sales, except you don't know how they're going to respond under pressure. That's right, failure. And it's these attributes. And I have seen people with frankly, far lower skill levels with exemplary attributes long term have this optimal performance. I always use Tom Brady because people think I'm a whack job. But like I think of Brady, not tremendous skill set, but some of these attributes that you write in the book, I was actually thinking of him from an athlete standpoint. Yeah, give us a little bit of a gift. There's 25 of them in the book, guys, when you were selecting, and I'm sure all 25 were important, were there two or three that really were requisite or stood out that were, you know, you really looked for in people? Because I don't want to give away the entire book. But what are a few of them that you could share with us that are attributes that are just. They're almost mandatory for optimal performance?
- [38:45]
Rich Devini
Well, so first. So I'll answer that question because I know people are curious. But the first thing I want to caveat is that the list of attributes to be a Navy SEAL is going to be different than the list of attributes required to be an athlete or a salesperson or a teacher or whatever. Right. So that list changes. So it's incumbent on you as a team leader or a leader. If you want to understand what attributes you need for your team to figure out what that list looks like. And this is how we also position ourselves properly in the environment. Right. Sometimes some people have a better makeup for being a nurse than they have for being a Navy seal. Right. And that's because the attributes they come to the table with. If we were to talk about buds, SEAL training, I would say the most important attributes are the grit attributes. So you're talking about courage, perseverance, adaptability, and resilience. And then probably the drive attribute, which there are five. There's self efficacy, there's discipline, there's open mindedness, there's cunning, there's narcissism, which we can get into that later if we want.
- [39:43]
Ed Mylett
Narcissism is an attribute.
- [39:45]
Rich Devini
Narcissism is an attribute. Yes.
- [39:47]
Ed Mylett
Okay. No, you're not doing that later. I gotta know this. That's fascinating to me. Cunning and narcissism just give me a little flavor. Then you go right back into that.
- [39:54]
Rich Devini
Absolutely. Yeah. And it's the most asked about one anyway, which is good. It was probably one of the most fun to write. Well, let's start with narcissism. Narcissism is obviously a pejorative word. And narcissistic personality disorder is a bad thing. Right. The DSM 5, which is a psychology bible, will state nine criteria which will define if I think if you have five or more, then you're. You have narcissistic personality disorder. However, when you read those nine, what happens is when I read, I was like, wait a second. Okay, I don't have that, but sometimes I kind of have a little of that. Right. And it really kind of made me think about why I became a Navy seal. In the first place. And. And think about when my friends would talk about why they became Navy seals. Certainly we were patriots, Certainly we loved our country, but we really, we just kind of wanted to be badasses, and we wanted to see if we could do something very few people could do. There's nothing wrong with that. And that's a little bit of narcissism talking. This is biological, right? When we're paid attention to by our parents as infants, we are getting hits of dopamine, which is a very powerful feel good chemical. Serotonin, which is kind of a bonding trust, I'm protecting you chemical, and then oxytocin, which is another bonding chemical. So that combination is powerful. When we're getting paid attention to, this translates to adulthood. All of us, to some extent, want to at some point, feel special, feel loved, you know, want to be paid attention to. Okay? That's a natural thing. And if you, if you have an audacious goal to be a rock star, a Navy seal, an entrepreneur, very successful, to stand out, to be special, there's nothing wrong with that. That's a little bit of narcissism speaking. And it can drive, and that's why I put it there.
- [41:33]
Ed Mylett
I love it. So I got to be honest with you, I'm thinking of all these friends of mine that are what I called peak performers, but to your point, optimal performers, because they don't just peak, they do it consistently. And there is a little bit of a quality of that and even a little bit of self thinking, meaning I want to get this attention. I want to do something significant. I want to prove something to myself that's special. And so I. I really want to acknowledge that. I agree with you on that. And I kind of jumped in there. I think you were on a little bit of a roll before I did that, but inside that answer you were giving, you create this mind gym. You also talk about resilience. I'm surprised that wasn't what you went to first, but obviously it's where you went. But resilience was one of them across the board, is it not?
- [42:19]
Rich Devini
It is. Although we have to recognize resilience is just the ability to bounce back, you still have to get through it first.
- [42:25]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, but you make a distinction in the book. I'm not interrupting you, but you make a distinction. It's not just you make a distinction about how you bounce back, when you bounce back. I'd love for you to go into that a little bit because this is huge. When you get rejected in sales, if you get knocked down, that's fine. Oftentimes it's the length of time you're looking. The length of time you lick your wounds.
- [42:44]
Rich Devini
That's right.
- [42:45]
Ed Mylett
Can you talk about that? It's one of my favorite parts of the things you teach because we have it so true and it's subtle. Almost nobody would make this distinction other than someone like yourself. So speak to that a little bit.
- [42:55]
Rich Devini
Absolutely. So resilience again. Resilience is the ability to get knocked off baseline, right. And then get back to baseline, which is extraordinarily important in any factor of human development, whether it's weightlifting, whether it's. Whether it's physical, whether it's mental, whether it's environmental. Right. Then there's. And so just to give another distinction, we were also really interested in what's called Anti Fragility, which is a great book by Nassim Talib. Right. That's the ability to get knocked off baseline. When you come back, you're stronger, right? You've moved, you've shifted your baseline. To be able to do either, you need to have the ability to reflect appropriately and for the right amount of time. And so the example I give in the book, which you probably enjoyed, was a former CEO of mine used to tell us what his grandfather told him, which was the two minute rule. And basically two minute rule was this. Anytime that you have something bad happen, okay, Something negative, bad, it's awful, it's horrible. You have two minutes to wallow, to mourn, to do whatever you need to do. After that two minutes, you stop and you get back on track. You're back in it. Same thing happens when anything good happens. Any big success or all that stuff, promotion or whatever. Two minutes to rest on your laurels, pat yourself on the back, feel like you're the big man or woman, get back to normal and then get back to baseline. So it's a mental exercise to help get back on baseline. Now, obviously, certain trauma, it's going to take more than two minutes, but I think the concept still remains to be able to reflect enough about something that happened and ask the right questions. So frame it properly allows us to get back to that baseline and many times grow from it and then move on. And this is the crux of optimal performance and in fact, growth, because we can't grow, we can't move on until we. Or we can't take those steps unless we shed that trauma.
- [44:49]
Ed Mylett
I think this should give people hope. I think some people think they're weaker than they are sometimes. Like I get knocked Down. And guys, this is a guy who led and selected the biggest group of badasses that walk the planet. He's saying they get knocked down. The question mark is can you get back to baseline? Or in anti fragility, can you get even better than baseline? And there is a time factor. So those of you that are knocked down or get knocked down, you need to begin to evaluate how quickly this two minute rule and however that manifests itself for you, because we all do. But I do feel like, and I would say I don't have a lot of attributes, but one of mine has been the pace at which I get back up to baseline or then eventually exceed it. And in mind, Jim, what you created, I guess in the seals are there. It sounds to me like you believe resilience can be developed and built, that it's. Even though it's an attribute, it can be expanded. True or false? And how do we do that?
- [45:45]
Rich Devini
Absolutely true. And so the idea is develop a working relationship with our brain, which was really the goal of the mind gym was to help guys begin to figure out this gray matter between their ears and try to access that and more proactively use that gray matter. Because again, we're where, just from a basic standpoint, I mean, we, you know, and our nervous system, which is, it's all connected, which we all know, but you know, the sympathetic response versus the parasympathetic response, this is active doing something versus recovery. Recovery is one of the key elements required. In fact, probably the key element required in any type of resilience or antifragility. You have to take time for recovery. This, we know this intuitively. When you lift weights, you take tear the muscle, right? The only way you grow muscle is to rest, okay? If you lifted the same weight every day, you just keep on tearing. You'd go into entropy. So you have to tear it and then you have to allow it to grow back, which is what recovery is. Accessing our kind of understanding, our neurology a little bit better allows us to more actively and proactively shift into parasympathetic and initiate some recovery more effectively, more often, and in some cases on demand. And that was really the key kind of goal of the mind gym was to teach guys, begin to teach guys how to do that more effectively, more efficiently and more quickly. So I used to call sometimes recover in between gunfights. Because honestly, resilience, we talk about the two minute rule. And you know this, and I think a lot of your audience knows this. When you're really Kind of performing. Performing at a high level, whether it's optimally or peak, whatever that looks like. Sometimes the situation, the environment doesn't allow for recovery in the moment. Okay? And so this is. You can watch every. Any war movie, right, where the guy who's. The guy's next to his buddy, his buddy. His buddy gets shot, and he. And you'd spend the next two minutes while the guy's, you know, in the movie is crying over his buddy and mourning all that. That doesn't happen in the real world. You don't have time to mourn. You have to win the gunfight. Right. Which means it's. It's incumbent on us. And, you know, obviously, combat's an extreme case, but it's incumbent on us that if the recovery is not available in the moment, you have to. Have to. Have to make it a priority later. All right? So. So if you're in the moment and something bad happens and you're just like, okay, I got to block that out, and I just got to move forward and make this. I got to. I got to finish the mission. I got to win the fight. Finish the mission. Once that's all done, you need to go back and you define time to recover. This is very hard for. For top performers to do because we're so. We're so kind of seduced by the performance part of it. We love breaking through. We like getting through. But recovery is huge. Just think of it in the terms of if you don't recovery, if you don't recover effectively, it's like you're benching three times a day every day, right?
- [48:44]
Ed Mylett
Yeah. I've seen this take out more people than most people realize. I've seen people have really good careers and whatever it is they do for a window of time, and they don't recover. They don't recover. Then what happens is they're fatigued and they make huge mistakes or they fry. They just fry out. And so this is a huge thing, by the way. I don't know that we've done an interview that in 20 minutes has had this much stuff in it this quickly. I think everyone. This is like crap, like, you know, pulling over the side of the road and writing things. But on recovery, is there anything other than sleep? Because sleep's the go to any other things you offer. Say, hey, this is a recovery technique.
- [49:21]
Rich Devini
Well, some of the quicker ones can be breathing. And I know you've had Dr. Andrew Huberman on.
- [49:27]
Ed Mylett
I was thinking of him. When you've been talking, it's like he.
- [49:31]
Rich Devini
And I have been. And he's in the book. He and I have been friends now for, gosh, four years. And we've been working on a lot of this together. And so a lot of my neuroscience comes from just geeking out with him and hanging out with him and his friends. But breathing techniques, so we can do. Certain breathing techniques will help us shift into parasympathetic. There's vision techniques which Huberman talks about. Open gaze, for example. Real fast way for your audience. Open gaze is just. It's different than focusing. Instead of focusing on something in front of you, just go soft and start noticing your peripheries, right? That open gaze has been proven to start shifting your nervous system into parasympathetic and start going that way. So those are some micro techniques. A little bit more macro techniques is really start to think about anything that produces relaxation and joy in your life. Think about doing more of. Okay, this doesn't have to be meditation. Some people like meditation. Meditation I find difficult, personally. And so I had to find different ways. For me, my meditation is I go running. I go running in the woods here in Virginia. I don't wear headphones. I don't time myself. And I just think and I just let my mind wander. Right? That is recovery for me. Visualizing. Visualizing is a hugely powerful technique because the brain, if you visualize correctly and deeply, the brain doesn't recognize the difference between real experience and visualized experience. So you can create the same neuro transmitters and hormones that you would in the real experience just through visualization. So, for example, I, you know, I have two boys. They're. They're teenagers now, but, you know, when they're, when they're babies, I used to, you know, they used to nap on my chest, right. Such a wonderful feeling as a parent just to have your. Your kid sleeping on you. And what I would do sometimes is I would just visualize that. And as I visualize that deeply, those. All those feelings would come back. All those neurotrans, all those chemicals would be flooding me. That's recovery as well. So. So think about, think about some breathing, think about vision, think about visualization. And then you could do things like, I mean, yoga, meditation, the float. I'm a big fan of float tanks. I don't know if you ever tried the. Love those things. And so. And then, of course, sleep is the kind of the coup de GR of recovery.
- [51:46]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, I want to go back through that. So, guys, we've talked about float tanks on the show before, and I've Recommended it to friends of mine that even are struggling with some depression and mental. Even minor mental illness. So float tanks are big for me. The things that you've listed rich for me is float tanks. I do open gaze is something that I did as a child rather naturally. So it's something I go back to. And the visualization stuff that he's talking about, guys, can also. You can almost call it, like, awake, dreaming. And it's something that I do. And one of the things is I'll repeat the same ones over and over. And that had given me a previous good feeling. So for me, it's a very random moment in my life that when my daughter was a little girl, we're on a boat, and she asked me, daddy, can I drive the boat? And she sits in my lap. And just the way just my little girl felt, I had my arms around her. It was a little bit windy and cold, and it was like one of my favorite moments of my life. Well, I've played that video thousands and thousands of times, guys. And so that when I get into an anxiety or stress state or fatigue state, I go right to that video, and it takes me back to that moment. I do it, guys. Silly things. Like before I do my labs, my blood draws with 10 vials of blood, I'll look away. And I go back to the boat with Bella and I. Because it's become reflexive. Those neurotransmitters, those synapses have been so connected now that I can go there anytime I want. These are real things that you can be doing to recover and also to perform at an optimal level. I love that you talk about this because it's very rare. I'm listening to you. I'm thinking, were you a little bit, pun intended, Fish out of the water in the seals, the way you talk and think around the other guys, not every dude I know is like you. Gosh, I got to tell you something. I wish we'd been recording our pre show conversation here because it's been so good. And I kind of knew in having this woman on the show that today would be special. And I already have a sense that it's going to be based on our conversation before we started recording. Her new book is called Be Find, you'd Voice, build, you'd brand Live youe Dream. We're gonna have a remarkable conversation today with Jen Gottlieb. Jen, welcome to the show.
- [53:46]
Jen Gottlieb
Ed, I am so excited about this. I don't think you have any idea the fear thing.
- [53:51]
Ed Mylett
Let's talk about that. Because this is content of the book. I want to give them some of the stuff in the book because I want them to know how good this is. There's a disease we all suffer from called fear, but you illustrate what some of the symptoms of that disease are, so you actually know whether you're suffering from it. So what are a few of those symptoms that you have in here?
- [54:08]
Jen Gottlieb
So most of the time, people think about fear of, like, anxiety and like, you know, their stomach does a backflip and they. They're scared, right? Their heart's beating, they've got a panic attack. I've experienced it so many times. But there are other symptoms of fear that show up, and you don't necessarily realize that they're fear. Things like perfectionism, comparisonitis, fomo. But I like to call FOMO not fomo, like fear of missing out, but fear of missed opportunity. So, you know when you're scrolling. We just talked about this, you're scrolling social, and you're like, oh, man, that person's getting all the likes and the follows, and they're growing their business or they were featured in the media and you're like, oh, that should be me. And then this other voice comes in. I can't do that. They've already done it. So then you spiral down comparisonitis, and then perfectionism, and then analysis paralysis, which is another symptom of fear, where you're like, oh, there's just so many options, so many people doing this. They're already doing it. I'm not as good. And then you've got imposter syndrome. And then it's like, you know what? I'm gonna wait. Yeah, I'm gonna wait till next month. Maybe I'll have a better idea next month maybe. And then next month comes around. You know what? I'm gonna wait until maybe Friday. Maybe I'll. And fear's whole job is to keep us exactly the same. So it's gonna sneak in and it's gonna tell us all of these lies, and we can either listen and negotiate with fear. You're right. You know what? I'm gonna wait till Friday, because Friday seems like a much better day for me to do that first Instagram live or for me to start the podcast. It'll be much better. Then I'll feel better maybe, you know, I'll get this great, brilliant idea. What I have learned over a lot of experience of being seen when I was absolutely petrified to do so, in every way, shape and form, and every single symptom of fear, screaming at me in the back of my mind. Don't do it now. Don't do it now. Is that if you can learn how to talk to fear and embrace it and put your arm around it and understand and know that you're not gonna be fearless, you're not gonna be able to kick it out of the car, but if you can drive with it there in the passenger seat of your car and do the thing with it there anyway, you take away the power that it has over you.
- [55:59]
Ed Mylett
Really good.
- [56:00]
Jen Gottlieb
So I'll tell you a story, Ed. So this is really when I learned how to talk to fear for the first time. And it's with one of our friends, Louis. So that was the first podcast that ever podcast, first mastermind that I ever did was with Lewis Howes. And I was in this mansion in Malibu. It was like my very first experience learning from somebody, getting mentors. I was like, this is amazing. Like, I love this. I am vibing. I am here. I am outside of my comfort zone, but I love it. Lewis comes down and he's like, all right, everybody, we're gonna go to the second floor because I've got a surprise for you. And I'm like, oh, yes, I love surprises. Let's go. I'm, like, down. We walk up, and I see all of these buckets of ice in front of us, like, these big tubs of ice. Now, this is way before anybody was doing cold plunges. Okay? So now everyone that's listening, you scroll your Instagram now, you will see 85,000 people doing cold plunges. It's very trendy at this point in time. No one was doing this for fun. And I see this lady pouring these buckets of ice into these tubs, and I'm like, oh, that's a lot of beverages for this party. I literally did not understand what was happening. And he's like, we're going to do ice baths. And, Ed, I had a panic attack. Like, I, like, full on full body. I'm sure you've had. I have anxiety sometimes full on crying tears. I just. I don't know what it was about that, but I did not want to do this. And so I sat on a bench and I watched all of my friends get in the ice bath, very scared, and get out of the ice bath. Like, they're like a phoenix rising from the ashes, like a different person. And I'm sitting there watching all these transformations happen, and I'm still crying, and I'm still not okay with this. And fear is saying, you can just Tell them that you're allergic to cold or whatever. You know, I was negotiating with myself why I didn't have to do it. And then I had this thought, and I was like, how do you want to feel tonight when you get in your bed? Because no matter what, you're gonna get in your bed tonight. Like, no matter how uncomfortable you are today, whether you do it or not, whether you sit in the ice bath for two minutes and it sucks and it's so painful, or you don't, you're gonna end up in your bed, and it's gonna be two seconds later. And are you gonna be proud of yourself for what you did today and how you showed up? Or are you gonna feel like, man, I should have just done that. I should have just been able to withstand the uncomfortableness for 2.5 seconds. So I was like, you know what? All right, I'm gonna talk to Fear. And at that time, I was reading this book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert.
- [58:17]
Ed Mylett
I know the book.
- [58:18]
Jen Gottlieb
And in the book, she says, go on a road trip with fear and talk to it and put it in the passenger seat. So I'm sitting there in this robe in my bathing suit. Cause I was gonna take the photo, but I wasn't gonna get in the ice bath, okay? So I'm like, all right, Fear, shut up. I'm like, shut up. I'm gonna do this. And I'm like, you're gonna sit there, and I'm gonna drive, and you're gonna come, and you can yell at me, and you can tell me that this is not okay. But I'm gonna tell you that you are not in charge here. I am.
- [58:41]
Ed Mylett
I love it.
- [58:42]
Jen Gottlieb
And I drove. Me and Fear, we drove together into the ice bath, and it sucked, and it was painful, and I hated it. But I sat in there for two minutes, and I got out of the ice bath, and, Ed, do you wanna know what I did right after I got out? I got back in again.
- [58:54]
Ed Mylett
You did it again. Wow.
- [58:56]
Jen Gottlieb
Because this is where I learned when you do the thing you're afraid to do, you take away the power that fear has over you. It doesn't mean it goes away. You just take away its power.
- [59:07]
Ed Mylett
I gotta tell you, I wish I knew you when I was younger. This idea. Here's the brilliance of that. I want to say something. I want to acknowledge when something's unbelievably like. I got goosebumps right there. Look at. On my hairless arms. I got goosebumps when you actually put fear with you in the passenger seat, you actually separate you from it. And you actually begin to understand that that is not you, that it's an outside influence, and you begin to separate yourself from it. I'm gonna say something I've never said out loud before right now, since you were that vulnerable. When I was really young, Tony Robbins saw me speak and he thought, he actually said to me that day, he goes, I think you may be the greatest speaker I've ever seen. This is when I was young and raw. And then he goes, let me correct that. He goes, you're the most talented speaker I've ever seen. But there's things you would need to do to improve. Come to my event. And I come to this event and there's a firewalk. So it's my version of the ice bath for you. And we're in the line, and I'm terrified. I'm terrified. Now I'm watching hundreds of people walk down this firewalk. You know, the burning coals thing. I'm watching all of them do it. I can't believe I'm telling everybody this, but I think it'll give you hope. And I'm getting more scared and more scared and more scared. But you got your peer group, they're like, you can do it.
- [60:20]
Jen Gottlieb
You can do it.
- [60:20]
Ed Mylett
Felt like, you know, I'm in an Adam Sandler movie and I finally get up there and I lost state. Fear took over. So I started to do it and my feet start to burn halfway through and I jump off and I get off about a quarter of the way down the hot coals. I get off and I was like, oh. They're like, you can go back again. And I go, okay. And I pretend to go to the back of the line. And I left the event.
- [60:45]
Jen Gottlieb
You did.
- [60:45]
Ed Mylett
I left the event. I was gone. It was the first night of a three day event and I left it and I let fear kick my ass. And that kicked my ass for about three years because I didn't. I got into bed that night because you are going to get into bed. And I got into bed that night. Here's what's crazy. The event was still going on in the hotel when I got into my bed defeated and let fear kick my butt.
- [61:10]
Jen Gottlieb
That's right.
- [61:11]
Ed Mylett
I tell everybody that story for two reasons. To illustrate how brilliant and right you are, and two, to give you hope if maybe then one of the top people in the world in personal development at one point couldn't walk down Tony Robbins firewalk and left the event. And now I'm doing What I do with you now today, you ought to have hope. If you've had some of these events in your life where fear beat you, that it doesn't define you long term, that I ended up being arguably the Tony Robbins of this generation or one of them, and I couldn't even do his 50 foot firewalk and I left his event. That ought to give all of you hope. And then she's given you the strategy. Jen just gave you the strategy. You had a piece of content, I think it was this week. That's brilliant. I want to ask you because I think people, this is a fair question. How do you distinguish between when something is fear and your intuition talking to you saying, you should not do this. So how do you know it's not intuition instead of fear?
- [62:01]
Jen Gottlieb
This is a tough one because fear is really sneaky and it's really, really, really good lie. And it'll come in and it'll convince you like, oh, no, no, no, this is your intuition. You really shouldn't do this. What has helped me and this has helped me every single time I heard this from somebody and I don't even remember who it was. I wish I could quote them. I don't remember who told me this, but I was really battling through. Is this in my intuition? Is this like my gut telling me that I should do this thing or I shouldn't do this thing? Or is this fear? And the question is that I ask myself now is whose voice is that? Whose voice is telling you that you should or shouldn't do it? Is it your voice or is it your parents voice? Is it your husband's voice or your wife's voice or your friends voice or the random people on the Internet's voice? You don't even know who they are. A lot of the times it's that for people, what they will think. And we don't even know who they are, right? It's like, what will they think? Or it's Suzy from college, right? Or you know, my cousin from ages ago, they're gonna think of me on the Internet. And we care so much about that. And it's a normal human experience to care what other people think. We want to be liked, we want to be approved of. We want people to say, good job, we do. And that's okay. And if you're sitting here listening like, oh, that's a bad thing. I don't want to care what people think. We're going to.
- [63:11]
Ed Mylett
Yep, I do.
- [63:12]
Jen Gottlieb
Yeah, we all do. But here's the thing. We don't want to wake up. I love how you talk about. You think about death. Often. I don't want to wake up on my deathbed one day, my hundredth birthday, and say, oh, I let all the random people on the Internet or people that I didn't care about dictate my actions. And I let the fear of what they would think of me override my gut intuition of what I knew I was meant to do on this planet. And so I ask myself, is it my voice or is it the voice of somebody else? And when I hear my own voice in there, you know. You know your voice. But when I hear, like, oh, that's my husband Chris's voice, you know? And even though I love Chris and I care so much what he thinks, and this is for everybody with a partner out there, like, I've done it before where I have made lots of decisions based on somebody that I was in a relationship with and what they would think of me. But now I know better, and I'm like, that's Chris's voice. Chris, that was your voice telling me that I shouldn't. But my voice, who I will be proud of myself at the end of this night, when I get in my bed and I look up at the ceiling, I'm like, did I squeeze all the juice out of the lemon today? Did I do it all? Did I lay it out all in the field? Or did I phone it in today? As long as I listen to my voice and I stay true to who I am, I'm always okay with myself at the end of the night.
- [64:28]
Ed Mylett
So good. Jen, I love this idea. If we're gonna get into the bed at the end of the day, well.
- [64:32]
Jen Gottlieb
So I have time on my wrist. So I tattooed this on my wrist. Not. Cause I wanted a tattoo. It's my only tat, and it's actually fading off, which is crazy. I don't even know how that happens. But I tattooed this on my wrist to remind me that no matter what, time never stops. Gosh, Discomfort is only temporary all the time. No matter what. We're both gonna end up tonight in our bed. This interview is gonna be done no matter what. No matter if it was amazing or if it was bad or if it was scary or if we were uncomfortable. No matter what happens today, this too shall pass. You will end up in your bed, but the person that you become, through the uncomfortable moments, through the wins, through the losses, through the hard times, through the ice baths, through the firewalks, through all. All the stuff, the hard conversations, you have to have or maybe, oh, my God, the face plant that you made in front of all those people. No matter what, you being able to withstand all of that stuff and get into your bed at night and understand, wow, I can do this no matter what, I'm gonna end up here. That's what powers me through. That's what makes you who you are. And that growth that comes with that, that's permanent.
- [65:37]
Ed Mylett
Okay, if you're driving your car right now, just check the miles per hour because you're going too fast. I can just tell you, you get that fired up, listen to somebody. So just slow down a little bit so that you don't run off the road. That's so good. You're such wisdom for such a young woman. It's like, I. I wish I had it when I was your age because it's profound what you're saying. This show is sponsored by Better Help. Who's your support system? For me, it's my family and friends. And, you know, one of the things I get asked often is what are all 800 people that have been guests on your show have in common? And not all of them have this in common. But the thing that would surprise most people, that many of them have in common is they've been to therapy, including myself. That's something most people don't talk about. You know, therapy can help you from things like you're working through some trauma from childhood or a difficulty that you're going through right now. But it could also be just to get clarity of thought, a sense of direction in your life. Talk out loud about your goals and dreams or your issues and problems with somebody. Therapy from BetterHelp is helpful because you can do it online. And if you don't vibe with your therapist, you can switch out anytime and get one that you do work with. Well, you can access a iverse network of 30,000 credentialed therapists, a wide range of specialties, and easily switch like I said. So build your support system of better help. Visit Better Help Ed show to get 10% off your first month. That's better. H lp.come ed show that's Better Help hp.come ed show this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. I'm so excited to have this man here today. I've wanted to do this with him for a long time, but it was the universe's timing, I think, that we did it now. He's incredible. He's constantly ranked as one of the top three, four, five leadership experts in the world. Robin Sharma, welcome to the show.
- [68:04]
Robin Sharma
Real blessing, Ed, Nice finally meet you.
- [68:07]
Ed Mylett
Yeah, pleasure. You strike me. It's interesting. You have such modern information you give, yet you are sort of counterculture to the modern world in the sense that you do live. I do sense this about you, that you do live a simple life, that you do take time for yourself, that you aren't chasing every shiny thing that comes your way. I think that makes you very, very unique. So you actually hit on one of the questions I had to ask you before we leave because I think it holds so many people back from becoming this hero, from revealing their genius, which is fear. And so just talk a little bit about how you do lean into fear every single day.
- [68:42]
Robin Sharma
So there's a chapter in the Everyday Hero manifesto called Hug the Monster. And it starts with a story. And there's a grandmaster walking up a Himalayan mountain, leading a crowd of people. And they're going to this great temple looking for great answers. And as they go higher and higher, more people start to follow the Grandmaster and they go higher and higher, and more people start to follow this little movement up the mountain. Once they get to the temple, Ed, they notice there's a courtyard. And before they can get into the entryway to meet the supermaster, they see there's three violent dogs on leashes. So the group starts to move into the courtyard, but all of a sudden, the dogs break free of their leashes and they start running towards the group. They start to run faster and all the other people start running down the mountain, terrified. The Grand Master who was leading them does something very interesting. He starts to smile. And then he yawns. And then he starts running towards the dogs. And dogs start running even faster. Grandmaster picks up his space, his pace, looks at them, starts running even more quickly. Yawns again for good measure. Dogs run even faster. He runs even faster. Now he starts to dance. A little dance, a little TikTok dance along the way. Eventually, these dogs get frightened because they feel his power and they run away. And I think as human beings, we construct a reality of these straw monsters that have been taught to us. If you love too deeply, you will be hurt. If you build a great business, you will be attacked. If you try to change the world, cynics will laugh at you. I mean, our job is to take the stones that people throw at us and build monuments to mastery that stand the test of time. I mean, that's what the Troll Deconstruction is about. I mean, you know, you're doing very well when you're being laughed a lot. Every visionary was initially ridiculed before they were revered. So the point is, you know, someone said to me the other day, but this all sounds so hard.
- [70:38]
Ed Mylett
And you know what?
- [70:39]
Robin Sharma
I went back to my hotel room. You know, what I thought about misery and unfulfilled promise is a lot harder. And I think the discomfort of growth is always to be preferred to the illusion of safety. So what I would say is, the things that all of us are scared about, that's where your growth lives and your freedom lies.
- [71:00]
Ed Mylett
Very good.
- [71:01]
Robin Sharma
And I think, you know, it starts with awareness, and then it begins with daily bravery practice. Let's call it micro bravery practice. But consistently doing difficult things, getting good at, consistently leaning into the things that make our palms sweat and our hands shake. And that becomes a practice. And if you practice it long enough, you get brilliant. Like it. Just like being a chess master. So it's almost like every day, you go down the steps to the cellar, you turn on the light, and you hug the monster. And if you hug your monsters, guaranteed, you'll realize they were much smaller than you thought they were.
- [71:35]
Ed Mylett
So damn good. That is absolutely a billion percent right. Oh, my gosh. The price you'll pay for not becoming the hero you're capable of becoming is far smaller than the one that you will pay if you never become that person. It's worth hugging that monster every single day.
- [71:48]
Robin Sharma
How do you do it?
- [71:50]
Ed Mylett
I lean into it. I actually do what I call feared things first. And it is a habit that I do. I like to get something done early in my day, habitually, that I'm a little bit afraid of, that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, that I have some anxiety with. I find that once I hug that monster, it was usually smaller than I thought, and it creates unbelievable momentum for the rest of my day, oftentimes for the rest of my month. And So I do do that. I also have become familiar with these monsters. And the more you familiar I think you become with hugging them on a regular basis, the more they sort of lose their power over you. I've seen this guy before. He's not so bad. I've seen this one before. So the more you face them and you do these difficult things, the more you become familiar with them. It's just like, I think it's someone in the NBA who's got to hit a shot with two seconds left. The first time you do it, there's a lot of work. Kobe Bryant hit a whole bunch of them. By the end of it, he was pretty comfortable hitting that shot under that pressure. And I think the more you put yourself under pressure, duress, you become comfortable in it. And you find what I call equanimity in those moments, which is the ability to be calm and to function at a high level in it. So I love it. That's one of my favorite conversations ever. I was going to be honest with you. I've loved today and I know everybody else has. I think you're a remarkable man. I really enjoy your company as well. You have this thing that I just. I love about most of my good friends, which is that I think they have this nuance between real confidence and presence about themselves, but yet combined with a huge dose of humility at the same time. I think people that have a ton of confidence but that humility, sometimes it's off putting and they're not curious enough to keep growing and learning because they think they know everything. And then our friends that have this tremendous humility, but they just never step forward with some confidence and build that hug the monster mentality in their life, sometimes they're tough to be around too. But that combination is what you really. You nuance that so well.
- [73:30]
Robin Sharma
I sense you're a good person.
- [73:31]
Ed Mylett
Thank you. Thank you.
- [73:33]
Robin Sharma
You know, and that really comes through in the conversation.
- [73:36]
Ed Mylett
Thank you.
- [73:36]
Robin Sharma
And that doesn't come easily. It's like hard won, hard won effort to get to a place where you're living your values the way it feels like you're living your values.
- [73:46]
Ed Mylett
I appreciate that, brother, and that's mutual. Thank you. Last question. I mean, I really appreciate that coming from you. So we've covered a lot. What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from the Secret. He's one of the stars, if not the star of the Secret. So I have John Assaraf here with me today. John, thanks for being here.
- [74:08]
John Assaraf
Brother Ed, it's so good to be here. And thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you.
- [74:13]
Ed Mylett
Could you talk about fear and some help that you could provide people in that regard?
- [74:17]
John Assaraf
Sure. If everybody can imagine for a moment you're driving a car and everything's going great, and all of a sudden, a light pops up on your dash. Now, the average person won't take a hammer and hit the light to turn it off. An average person will take a look at. What is that light? Am I low on windshield wiper fluid? Am I low on air in my tires? Is my back trunk open? What's going. So, just like the signal in a car is meant to make you aware, fear is a trigger in our subconscious mind that real or imagined danger has percolated in our brain. And so, fear. There's nothing wrong with fear. We can actually use fear as fuel. Now, I like to give people visuals. So imagine if you have two parts of your brain. There's many more, but imagine these two. We have the Einstein brain, then we have the Frankenstein brain. And when fear gets activated, let's assume that that's our Frankenstein brain going, what if. What if you get hurt? What if you lose money? What if you die? What if you get embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, or judged? And so why does Frankenstein even get activated? Because we're not born with those fears. And so if we're not born with those fears, that means that something in our brain is triggering this reaction automatically, without our thought. And that is what we call is the fear response. And we also know that that fear response causes something called the sympathetic nervous system to activate, which causes us to want to fight, freeze, or run away. That's just the absolute reaction at a biological level of what is happening now. When we want to deactivate that sympathetic nervous system, there's several, what I call our inner sizes that we can do. That actually gives us more control, more power, and the ability to reactivate the Einstein part of the brain. So inner size number one is really, really simple. It's called Take six. Calm the circuits. So as soon as you catch yourself in a state of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, that means that Frankenstein's activated. If you just took six deep breaths in through your nose, as slowly as you could, and then you exhaled as if you're exhaling through a straw in your mouth, if you just did that six times, that very simple inner size would deactivate the Frankenstein brain and allow you to reactivate your thinking, imagination, Einstein, part of your brain. And then you can do the second inner size which puts you right back in control. And that one I call is Aya A I A which is now a matter of awareness. Awareness of my thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, or the behaviors that I've just taken, or the one I'm afraid to take. And in a pure state of awareness without judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification. Let me repeat, without any judgment, blame, shame, guilt or justification of the feeling or the thought of the behavior. Now I'm empowered again because now I can observe. And now in this observational mode, I could say, okay, what's my intention? Let's say for the next 10 minutes. Well, my intention is to be happy.
- [77:51]
Rich Devini
Great.
- [77:52]
John Assaraf
My intention is to be productive. Great. My intention is to, you know, take action on this one thing that's gonna help me towards my goal and dream. So in the awareness and in the intention, then if I say what's one small action step I could take towards what I want instead of what I don't want. So all of a sudden I've interrupted a fear pattern. I've created this state of awareness, I've set an intention and now I'm taking action towards what I want versus being paralyzed by what I don't want. And a fear that may or may not be real. So awareness is what actually gives us choice and choice is what actually gives us freedom if we make the right choices.
- [78:34]
Ed Mylett
So good. So guys, the reason I wanted John on was because these are actionable steps that you could take. You need to go get intersize because these are actual exercises that will change your life. And I love how John arrived at this space. I want to go back, we just got pretty heavy there. And now I want to go to a little bit of a lighter space. But both of you and I have had mentors that have entered our life. We didn't come from perfect families, loving families, both of us, but not perfect families. And by the way, I don't know if that exists.
- [79:03]
John Assaraf
Yeah, I think that a dysfunction is normal. That's normal. If you had a functional family, that's not normal.
- [79:14]
Ed Mylett
That's not normal. Right. And I guess to the extent that the dysfunction you experience is probably part of these things we have to undo. And we'll talk about beliefs in that regard in a minute. But you have this guy, Mr. Brown. I've heard about Mr. Brown for years. But it's hard to imagine a man has become a multimillionaire. I mean, just so you know, John's built five, six different multimillion dollar companies. One of them's on 4 billion in revenue. He's taken a company public on NASDAQ. Means I'm a very accomplished man here. Have you ever thought about, like, running a marathon? Because I've thought about it, I'm like, there's an Ironman in Coeur d'alene where I spent my summers. Just the marathon part of it. I was like, that's bananas. 26 miles. You know, anybody ever thought about doing that? Or you ever watch one of these Ironmans and go, I'm do that someday. Then I want you to contemplate thinking about doing it 30 freaking days in a row. How about 50 days in a row? How about 100 days in a row? Guess what? I got the dude here today who did it a hundred in a row in a hundred days. His name is Iron Cowboy James Lawrence. Welcome to the program, brother.
- [80:22]
James Lawrence
Hey, Ed, man, I gotta tell you, huge, huge love, adoration, and respect for you.
- [80:29]
Ed Mylett
So he's. By the way, the reason I started with 30 and 50 is he's done that. And then when you did the 50 and 50, I'm like, bro, you're out of your damn mind. Right? And then to go do the conquer 100. But I'm reading about both, you know, both of those last two. It's inspiring, right? But this time, like day five, your shins start exploding, right? Like you're on day five. Talk, talk us through that. Did you think of quitting then?
- [80:52]
James Lawrence
So. So two really cool things happened that took me a little bit of time to realize. I went into it knowing that you can't train for 100 consecutive. You have to adapt and evolve along the way. And I knew, look, the first 15 and 20 of these are going to be hell because you've got to get to the point where you're broken physically ment and then push through that, and that's where everybody quits. And if I can push through that, my body's going to adapt and evolve and it's going to become the new normal.
- [81:23]
Ed Mylett
Stay on that. Everybody, I want you to write this down. Pull over. Adapt and evolve. That's in your business, that's in your family, that's in your fitness. That's the key. Go ahead, keep going.
- [81:31]
James Lawrence
Yeah. And so when I went into it with an ankle problem that I didn't tell anybody about, and it immediately exploded into my shin to where we developed a stress fracture in the bone. And super long story, but a miracle happened. We ended up Getting a carbon plated shin brace that allowed us to offload the shin and continue on to heal that stress fracture by doing the marathon portion every single day. It was a total miracle, but a complete testament to me that you give the body the tools and assets that it needs to recover. It can still do so under stress. And that was amazing to me to watch the body heal like that. Now the shin and the imbalance that created a hip problem became so painful. Some of my worst days, I don't remember them, but we have the video footage where I would be trying to move and the pain would get to a point that I could no longer manage it and I would black out. And we called him the wingman. My wingman would catch me, I'd come back to and he would do a 10 second countdown and then say, here we go. And we would repeat that until I got to. I'm going to be emotional, but until I got to the finish line that night. And again, it's just a testament to how powerful the mind is now. I was angry because I wanted to showcase how strong our team was mentally and physically. And I wanted to make the hundred look easy. I believed we could do that. And I was angry that I couldn't run. And then I was forced to walk. And it turned out to be the biggest blessing of the entire campaign.
- [83:38]
Ed Mylett
Why?
- [83:39]
James Lawrence
My, my, my pain and discomfort forced me to walk. And every single day we had people from around the country fly in and locals to support us. And without fail, they said, I'm so grateful you're walking because I wouldn't have been able to join you if you weren't walking. And I was hard on myself because I was like, look, I'm an athlete. I want to destroy this. And as I got deeper into it, I was like, I'm so grateful for this injury. I'm so grateful I'm walking. And my pain has turned into a blessing that other people can join and have an experience. And every single day somebody did their first 10k with me or their first marathon or their first full distance or their first 100 mile bike ride. And every single day I got to experience somebody else's first. And it was humbling. And it was, yeah, humbling.
- [85:01]
Tony Robbins
Wow.
- [85:01]
Ed Mylett
I mean, by the end of this, you guys, a couple hundred people riding, the cyclists with them and you, I actually, for you, I'm grateful that it didn't look easy because I think you connected at least with me watching you struggle. I'm on Instagram every night watching these videos when it was happening. And like, there were literally times for me watching you, like, I'm in tears, like, not wondering the next day, just. But it's one of the most. I don't even like to say one of the most because when I say that, then I have to think of something that I think is more. It's just insanely inspiring. And I can't think of something mentally or physically I've ever seen close to this because of the adversity, because of all the people that got caught up in it with you. Also, though, there's another element of this that, you know, this idea of adapting, man, I'm just so glad that you said that for everybody's sake. But I'm curious of all of them. The one time you did the 50 or this time, was there a moment where you're like, I'm out. I'm going to like, you're literally blacking out, Right? So that's insane to me. But was there a time when you just consciously went, I'm in too much pain. I'm in too much. Because, guys, these are icy roads, snowy. Sometimes imagine shin issues on a snowy ice. Oh, my gosh. Like, was there a point or are there lots of points where you're like, I'm out. Was there one particular bro, where you're like, no, no, no. Like, this time I'm really out.
- [86:29]
James Lawrence
So my team is world class. And there's the core four of us. It's my wife, Sunny, Joe, and then the two wingman, Casey and Aaron. And they were the four of us thick and thin through the 50. And then I brought those boys back on for the 100, and they played massive roles. And Sonny is obviously the head of this entire thing. And we just know from experience that it's okay to feel. It's not okay to quit, it's okay to problem solve, it's not okay to quit, and it's okay to process. And I think that's what a lot of people don't do, especially men, is they don't allow themselves to feel and process before they hunker down and keep going. At no point in time was ever any of us saying, you know, we're quit, and we got to be talked back into it. But every single one of us had moments where we just needed to cry, to feel beautiful, supported, to where we said, okay, I've had my two minutes. I'm not going to dwell on it. We're going to quickly turn this around and we're going to get back to work. And that's the reason the four of us are so strong together, because all four of us have that mindset. And I will tell you this. The closest that I ever came to even considering it was somewhere between 15 and 20, where we were at the peak of that pain, where I had a couple days where I was blacking out. I don't remember portions of it. And I remember standing in the shower, and I kind of just shrugged my shoulders at Sunny, and I said, I don't know how many more days I can manage the pain at that level. Because when you've got 85 more days to go, that is so. It's so daunting. And when you're broken, you. It's hard to conceptualize what it's like. And I'll never forget what she said. She said, you're done today, and you don't have to do anything else. And all you have to do is now trust in the team, get out of the shower, go lay on the table, and let them take care of you, and then we will face whatever comes tomorrow together. And I think that's what a lot of people don't do, is you've got this today's mentality of the people that do decide to show up, that it's like, I got to go in all the time. I got to go all in all the time. I got to hurt more than he does. And they don't take two seconds to reset mentally. And I can't tell you how important that was. And the valuable lesson that I learned was, you've done enough today to take two seconds and reset. And as soon as I got into that rhythm, knowing. And again, it takes putting the right team together, and then it takes letting go and trusting the team that you have put together to do their job, to do their part. And that's hard, too, as a man, to let go of, like, control of every piece of that puzzle and to go, I surrender, and I trust you to do your part. And it's hard to find good people nowadays that are willing to do their part. And I have that team. And so when Sonny said, you've done enough today, beautiful. And I think that's so important because we go through life, and I think we're so hard on ourselves. We see ourselves differently. And how many times in our lives, on our journeys, do we take a minute and say, you're enough. You've done enough. And I think it's so important, especially as men, to be. To be vulnerable and just say, I've done enough today. I'm going to take on tomorrow when tomorrow comes.
- [90:30]
Ed Mylett
I have someone on the show this week that is. I've never had anybody like him on my show in the 400, 500 shows I've done. And I think the reason for it is there's nobody like him actually on the planet Earth. And so to get this one dude on the show today, it's just an honor for me. Let me give you a little bit of background on this guy. It's pretty incredible. Number one, May 27, 2016, he ends up setting a world record. He conquered what they call the Explorers Grand Slam Challenge, which means this. Listen to this, you guys. He summited the tallest peak in each of the seven continents, including Everest. Sky, the last degree of the north and south pole. Less than 50 people have ever done this in the history of the planet Earth. Only like a handful have ever done it in less than a year. This dude does it in 139 days. He's like, yeah, the other thing. Then he decides he's gonna go all the way across Antarctica unmanned, like with no assistance. Does that in a record time. And this is after, by the way, years before, burning his feet and legs to the point where he was told he may never walk again. This dude's bananas. And I cannot wait to get in his head and his heart to share his insights about how you can change your Life. So, Colin O'Brady, welcome to the show.
- [91:44]
Colin O'Brady
Brother Ed, thanks for being here. Appreciate it, man.
- [91:47]
Ed Mylett
What if you had never pushed yourself to an extreme? I'm just curious. You burned your legs and your feet and by the way, he's in this hospital, it's unsanitary. His cat walking over his body like. And again his mom comes and what if after that, because he decides, by the way, I just got to give this away to everybody. It blows my mind. He's like, his mom says, what's your Everest? Basically, while he's laying there, he's like, I don't know. I'm never going to get out of here. I'm not going to walk again. And I'll just speak at 4, call, call and says, I'll do a triathlon. Eighteen months later, this dude does a triathlon after he was told he could never walk again. Andy freaking wins it. He freaking wins the triathlon. It's insane. And then you've gone on. What if you had never pushed yourself, never known what you were capable of? Because there's a lot of people, Colin, that go through this whole life in the 5, 6 range, never knowing what they're capable of. What if you would have never done that in your life? How much different do you think you would be? Your marriage would be. You as a person would be just. I mean, I don't know if you ever sit back and think about that, what if I'd have never seen what I was capable of?
- [92:54]
Colin O'Brady
It's such a powerful and important question and it just, I'm smiling because it just strikes at the heart of the. What I'm passionate about, sharing what I've shared about those ones and tens, you know, people have asked me and it's a different question, but it's come from the same place of I was 22 years old, the reason I got burned in this fire was I was, I jumped a flaming jump rope. I was on a beach in Thailand, 22 years old, clearly not a fully formed prefrontal cortex and I saw a couple guys with a kerosene soaked jump rope and I was like, gee, that looks like fun. What could possibly go wrong here, right? And I wrapped that rope around my body, lit my fire completely on, lit my body on fire to my neck. And I thankfully was near the ocean, jumped in the ocean, saved my life, but not before about 25% of my body was burned as you mentioned, predominate my legs and feet. And doctors thought I would never walk again normally. And I spent months in rural Thai hospitals, I was in a wheelchair. All these things, right? And people have asked me, well, if you could go back in a time machine and Whisper to your 22 year old self, would you tell them not to jump the jump rope? And it's an interesting question because the knee jerk response is of course don't jump the jump rope, don't light your body on fire. And I wouldn't wish the physical pain of that injury on my worst enemy. And I'll tell you what was worse than the physical pain was the emotional trauma. Not only that I suffered. My mom, thank God she saved me from that mess, but she also had to stare and see her child severely burned in a place where no one spoke the language, in the middle of nowhere that she couldn't move and the hurt that that caused her and my family. So on one, I wouldn't want to cause that hurt to anyone in my family. But here's the thing. I learned some of life's most valuable lessons from the resilience gained to recover from that, from having that specific goal, at least for me, which was a triathlon. And so that's all to say, I sit here with 10 world records. And we're not talking about the 10 world records that I set before I stupidly burned myself in a fire and screwed up my entire life. Life. I set those records after that burn. And I only could have walked across Antarctica if I had burned myself in the fire. And forget about the external achievement. I love that you brought up marriage into this. I show up for my wife with love and compassion and grace, and I don't always get it right. I'm not perfect, but I am a better person because I have sought out what, what, what, the limitations and the challenges and I've suffered some. And so it's a weird thing. I know, I know you were. I was just listening to your most recent episode with Eric the hip hop preacher. Love that dude. What a guy. And you're saying, you're saying to him, he's like, you know, he's, he's been homeless and he's been in the four seasons, you know, you know, he's been illiterate and he's got a PhD. There is something about pushing the edges of what we're capable of in any given moment that teaches us so much about life. And that's why people ask me, even after I share a story about five of my friends dying, five of my friends dies. There's not a day that goes by I tear up often still 18 months later thinking about the tragedy of that moment that I shared. And people sometimes ask me, they say, hey, Colin, aren't you afraid of dying? I think about it, yeah, I'm afraid of dying. I'm super afraid of dying. This life is such a gift. I am afraid of dying. But you know what I'm more afraid of? I'm afraid of not living. I'm afraid of not living and just sitting there in that five, day after day after day, and never seeing what you're capable of and never seeing what you can create and never feeling into your full potential, even if to feel into that hurts a little bit for a moment in time. Those ones, those twos, those threes, that is the juice of life. That's the Spice. And the 12 hour walk, even the walk itself is a metaphor for this experience. Guess what? If you walk for 12 hours, even if you take a ton of breaks, your feet are going to get tired at some point. You might be a little bit out of your comfort zone in terms of bring some food with you, bring some water, you might be a little dehydrated, you might get a blister on your foot, you might be tired you might think to yourself, I hate being alone. This is uncomfortable. Yes, you are likely going to experience some ones, some two, some threes on that day. But how many five days over the last 365 can you not even remember? What'd you do last Tuesday? What'd you do a month ago? What'd you do two months ago? There are so many days in our life that don't even imprint and register in our memory because they're just eh. Because you're not alive, you're not fully living. You take this 12 hour walk, you are going to seek some discomfort. It is going to be challenging at times. But I guess, guess you. What if I asked you a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, have you ever walked very far? You know what? 10 years ago I did walk by myself, alone, in silence. It's not going to be a five day. You're going to feel some one, some twos and threes, but every person I know to get back to their front door, every person I know that wakes up in their bed the following day with a few sore muscles. This is seven. It's an eight. More often than not. A nine, a ten. Thank you. I felt alive. I am not afraid of as afraid of dying as I am afraid of not living.
- [97:55]
Ed Mylett
Oh my gosh, Colin again. I just have to tell you, I'm so grateful I'm sharing this time with you, brother. Brother.
- [98:01]
Colin O'Brady
I feel the exact same, man.
- [98:04]
Ed Mylett
When you're talking, I think about this thing I say often, which is extremity expands capacity. When you do something to what you think is an extreme. You expand your capacity to do extreme things even if they don't seem very significant to you. And then I think about this might be an ironic thing. I just wanted to tell you when I was prepping and take this the right way. And I know that I just say it the way I mean it. I don't owe no grain of salt. This is a dude who struggled to jump rope with some fire, right? I know you were a college swimmer, but it's joke. And the same dude who couldn't jump rope with fire that almost ended his life is now doing world records across Antarctica, climbing peaks, doing the grand slam. So it's amazing. I think oftentimes we think, well, I'm not very good at something now so I'll like never be good at it. Well, this is a dude who didn't even jump rope correctly when he was 22 years old. I know there was fire with it and all that. But then to think that same dude is now the dude shattering all these records that literally no physical living human being has ever done before is a dude who couldn't get the jump rope thing right when he's 22 in Thailand. Do you ever think about that? Like that proves extremity expands capacity, right?
- [99:11]
Colin O'Brady
I'll go one step further, which is after the Antarctica crossing, I had a lot of doors open. To me there was so much press, media, 2 billion media impressions is the most widely viewed expedition in modern history. And of course that's going to open some doors, right? And it was a beautiful experience, a beautiful moment in time that I'm deeply humbled and grateful for. We was able to build a very successful and lucrative series of businesses on the back of that, et cetera, et cetera. But I decide that beverage lens. What's your next expedition? And I get this idea to row a boat across Drake Passage. So a rowboat, tiny little rowboat. For people who don't know, Drake passes most treacherous stretch of ocean in the entire world. So from the southern tip of South America all the way to Antarctica, 750 miles. It's where the Atlantic, Atlantic and Pacific and Southern Ocean all converge. And that convergence of those ocean currents creates like 40 foot waves and there's icebergs. It's freezing cold. I mean, it's insane. There's been a laundry list of thousands of boats that have shipwrecked in Drake Passage. But not just like a hundred years ago, ten years ago, a cruise ship sunk in the middle of Drake Passage. Like that's how crazy. Like that's a modern time cruise ship still sunk in Drake Passage. And I'm thinking I'm going to get a couple of buddies and we're going to row a boat, no motor, no sail, 28 foot long, 3 foot wide, 2ft off the water's edge and open, open hole. So we're getting crashed the entire time. So I go to discuss Discovery channels, like, I want to film your next thing, whatever it is, tell me what it is. And so I go to them and I say, well, the next thing is a rowboat crossing a straight passage. No one's ever done it. And they say, great, great, great. They sign this big, you know, seven figure check to produce the whole thing and pay, you know, whatever. Great, great, great. It's going to be awesome. I'm leaving in three months. This is a pretty quick turnaround. And I finally, after all the paperwork signed, everything's down, ready to go. I turn to the producers, my Family knows this, but most people don't realize this. I'm rowing a boat across straight passes. That's great. And I said, but I got some. One thing I got to tell you, I've actually never rode a boat anywhere.
- [101:05]
Ed Mylett
Come on, man.
- [101:06]
Colin O'Brady
Anywhere. Literally. Not at summer camp, not at.
- [101:10]
Ed Mylett
Not. Oh, my gosh, come on, dude.
- [101:13]
Colin O'Brady
Not at, you know, not in college, not at ever. I've never. And I've also not spent. It's not like I'm a sailor, so I don't know, like, everything about ocean and seafaring. I. This is a 100% fully unfamiliar thing that's been. The thing that's not unfamiliar is pushing my body or pushing my mind or taking on big goals or things of that nature. But I have literally never rowed a boat anywhere, ever. And so I reach out to a buddy of mine who's a rowing coach in Portland, Oregon, where I grew up, and I said, I need you to come meet me down at this dock and teach me a little bit about rowing. And so he's like, yeah, sure. And I kind of explained the whole thing. He's thinking, you're out of your freaking mind. Maybe five years from now. When are you doing this? I said, well, I'm leaving in three months. Months. And so he gets me on this one man's single rowing school. You maybe have seen people do that or pictures of it or whatever. And I get in there, I'm in six inches of water on the dock. I try to take my first stroke, and I fall flat on my face. I literally fall out of the boat, and I'm, like, flailing around in 6 inches of water, and I stand up soaking wet, and this is that moment where you go, like, either I am an idiot. And of course, this is an extreme example. I'm never going to be a rower. But here's the thing I said to him, I look at him and I go, well, I guess I'm not a rower. But one word changes that. I guess I'm not a rower yet. Yet. I'm not a rower yet. We've got three months for that. And that is everything, right? We talk about God mindset. That is it. I'm not whatever you are right now, no matter what age you are, you're listening to this podcast. Wherever you are, your hopes, your dreams, your Mount Everest. What's your everything. You haven't reached the summit of your Mount Everest yet. Here's the thing. Kobe Bryant had to shoot his first hoop at some point. Stephen King had to sit down and write the first paragraph of his first novel. Before he could write 65 of the bestselling books of all time, Meryl Streep had to try out for her school play. All of these people were not at the top of their game when they came out of the womb. But at some point they chose to say in their identity, in their own confidence, in their own strength, in the story that they are writing about themselves, I am not this yet, but I can be and become anything I set my mind to. And three months later, I became the first person in history to row a boat successfully across the most stretcher stretch of ocean in the world. You can see the documentary Discovery plus, as it's called the Impossible Row if you want to see me get bashed around in some crazy ass situation in the middle of the ocean. But we can be and become anything we set our minds to. That's the truth.
- [103:51]
Ed Mylett
That's just unbelievable. And the way you tell a story and weave in the point, it's just so freaking good. I really do believe this. To the people that I know that are the most happy and successful or just one or the other have a lower threshold of how good or how prepared they think they have to be before they actually start something. And the people that aren't very happy or that aren't very successful have this massive threshold of what they think they have to know to just begin. And so they don't begin. To your point now, that is rather mind blowing. It's like Rob O'Neill was on my show Kill Bin Laden. He couldn't even. He didn't know how to swim weeks before becoming a Navy seal. Then I have you on and you're telling me I've never rode a boat and you're doing something that freaking bananas. Just. It just, it just blows my mind though.
- [104:41]
Tony Robbins
This is the Ed Milan show.